Heirs to a Cruel Star: Armoured Enforcer Core
by coldraven
Summary: Can you scrap of ink on paper? Away from here,they’ll be penning the history books. And what will be left? A name? And a promise to never ever ever ever again allow our existence? But we are Phantom Pain. And we will be heard.


Disclaimer: I do not own GSD or any associated material. Else I'd be feeding my cash cow right now. Please R&R

**Somewhere in the black**

They're cleaning house. Plenty of dirt to go under the carpet.

- Five enemy ships on the short-ranged scanner! Confirming…two, no! three _Nelsons_ and two _Agamemnons_.

- Hard to starboard. Reengage _Mirage Colloid_.

- It's not working! They've got a thermal lock on us! Permission to disengage the reactor-core.

- Denied … All hands level one battlestations.

- Ships closing at forty-five thousand.

- Sensors picking up enemy mobile suits launching.

- Torpedoes inbound!

- Engage _Igelstellung_. Ready the _Gottfrieds_. Prepare for mobile suit combat.

- Ten! Twelve…Eighteen units on the field!

- Two _Nelsons _closing inat thirty thousand meters to port. They're trying to flank us.

- Belay that. Maintain current heading. Engines to full.

- Enemy mobile suits closing at six thousand meters!

- Windams away!

- Under sustained hostile fire!

- Fire the _Gottfrieds_. Deploy countermeasures.

- _Nelsons_ at twenty thousand!

- We're hit!

- Damage report!

- The mobile suit deck has been compromised!

- Brace for decompression.

- Linear catapults one and two inoperable.

- Maintenance reports moderate structural damage. Sealing off bulkheads thirty-four through forty-two.

- Alright.

- Captain, the flight deck's reporting an unknown blockage at catapult four! Currently assessing damage.

- Port plating compromised! Countermeasures down to seventy seven percent.

- Stay our course, gentlemen. Gunnery, fire at will!

Can you scrap of ink on paper? Away from here, this moment, back on earth, in PLANT, they'll be penning the history books for the next generation of bright-eyed sheep in schoolrooms all over. But what will be left? A name? And a promise to never ever ever ever again allow our existence? When the last bow is taken and the curtain finally falls. That will be all.

But if you could allow me one selfish whim utterly bereft of meaning. Let me reach from this red time that can only be the Past. To touch you gently upon your shoulder and whisper: We were Phantom Pain.

**Phantom Pain's asteroid base: **_**Gabriel**_

The drugs won't work. He has a solitary bunk in the small dormitory. There is a porthole an inch above his face. Beyond, to tear a poet, framed in a lacuna of blackness, Luna. And pinned past the moon's rim, shining, evanescent Earth. There, if you may circumvent the steel and glass, roped by the gravity of words, words like fear and death and consequence. It's as simple as a step into your veranda, into the garden blueprinted in many a Sultan's palace. He pushes a fistful of hair from his eyes, blinks and all the cosmos wink back, and thinks: _The drugs won't work._

It's the grey winter of 70 and they're casting aside exhausted dregs of stew and comforters. Fires are damped and reborn roaring. It is one hydra, drawn from kindling to kindling all about the lines, and there is much of that to be found. It's here that he learns the term undying, beneath skies muddied by refugee flocks, surrounded by the _ack ack ack_ step of the reaper amongst delinquents liberated from school and ravenous for the march and drum. The furnace, as they might say, is lit and all the clockwork of war heaves. Only no does he draw towards the life and vecto**r** of the lines. And it's cold, colder than he has ever been. It's only a matter of time before he surrenders to his father's coat, it swallows him with more mercy than mother's brittle embrace. Of his theft, the old man will neither remember its contours nor recognize its loss. Not long now. My fire, my undying, and something like pride bleeds from some netheral locus into the coldest reaches of his flesh. The lines continue to push with a force he will later name malignance, but while it remains nameless it can only be an object, a map, a road to a dais crewed by two weak chinned automaton in blue. The greatest burning is blue. He passes youths as young as sixteen, bellicose and unshaven, hearts geared for violence. The child pulls his coat tight, hoping its spartanism will mask its expense, the end looms close.

_Waken child, 'ner you weep_

_Walk far now, 'ere you sleep._

The end, as these things are, is anti-climatic. A blue man matches his face to the copy on his papers, stamps them and says something important that he does not remember and hopes to repeat, such is the past. The embers roar, but he is Stormwater. And on you go lad, first truck to the left. Yes the sputtering one, no worries it'll get you there. No force better than OMNI. No time to drown, no time to doubt but doubt. Quick now, hear the wind. Follow the roll of fashions and revolutions. Night's coming, want to be ready before sunset, yes? He wonders if they know, but all that comes is bile and fear devouring eidolons that catch his arm and throw on the cuffs. Which would have been the lesser perdition?

Would have?

In the temporal backbone of cognition, memory versus dream, imagination against reason, it'll always be the winter of 70.

-Craig? The intercom lethargically coughs, knifing the black, to the heart. Alarum. By the second his spine is hunched and up, face cradled in arms. Agony and dehydration are abstractions, an intellectual surety that's there and fucking his head over, its ubiquity numbs but does nothing lay on its demons when he doubles over, choking.

-It's us…Hey, wake up; you've been out for ages. Get up, walk it off.

Try is not quite the word for his stillness. But his eyes water open to a vindictive whirl that careens him with a patchwork fist back to the last withering, drug-born hole. Craig punches the intercom, but attempted speech only gives a sand-ragged snarl. He's been this route before. _Must go cold turkey. Must go cold turkey. _The door opens for him with a pneumatic hiss.

Emilee Junge and Aida Neuveux. Aida and Emilee. They slip past him and supernova the lights.

-Morning girls?

-That's right soldier, says Emilee, three days since you came to dock. Tsk. The dorm is littered with syringes and an assortment of split pills, pale, chromatic globules wait attendant by the bunk. Craig takes the head, pulling his knees to his chin.

-So, naked girls or ultraviolence?

-Not everyone shares your pastimes Aida. He resolves to come back swinging the snark-bat as soon as her three figures resolve into one. Aida kicks off her shoes and bellyflops on the other end of the bunk, absently tossing pills in his general direction.

Emilee and Aida. Aida and Emilee. Emilee's the cherub and the boss. Tall enough to look him in the eye. He likes her smile. It's like her age, a full step somewhere beyond, almost three years, one whole war. So she mothers them. And there is Aida. All talk of the town material with the barbarism of a jacked bulldog, flaming mad as her tresses are red. Once, on shoreleave, she broke a footslogger's nose for looking at her wrong. All things considered, it isn't too farfetched a tale. It would explain how she avoids the unwanted attention. That, and her figure cloaking trenchcoat that leaks mold and bad karma. Home.

-Oh, cut it out.

-I know, I'm OCD about this, Emilee clucks. Just let me clear off the obvious bits. She returns to attacking the chaos. How do you live in here? It's an absolute warzone.

Aida shrugs to say beats me and pins with accusatory glare. She throws another pill, this time with intent. It stutters off the wall. Klick Klack. He smile, a small one, knowing it's the first since leaving on the _Horatio_.

-Point blank.

-I'm sorry, just who has the higher target scores?

-There's a difference between a kill and a sim. Remember Tychus-4?

The next shot (butt of a syringe) nails him on the shoulder. Just hit the middle one. On impulse, he catapults the nearest pillow at her. Predictably, Aida plucks it neatly from the air, but that not the point is it? She grimaces at its dampness.

-Did you sleep on this?

-Three days straight. He regrets baiting her. Noisy, rabid woman. And let none tell you otherwise. Emilee's draped on the wall, but there's no time to wonder how she's taking this. Aida launched into a bombardment of sonics and other assorted shrapnel.

-Dwit.

-Harridan. Dodges another shot. That all you've got? No, no, no. Just shut up.

-Masochist. Wait till I lynch you, Aida sniffs, sticks out her tongue. Childish.

-Bring it on.

-You know I'll tear you a new one.

Aida spins, half circle, her coat billows off in folds. She's coiled, on the balls of feet at the bed's edge, her laughter is feral, taunting. Singsong: I'll kick your ass and you know it. He admits that in certain phases of cordiality, he enjoys pushing her buttons. Today is not such a day. As it is, she's probably right, even without the migraine that spawns whorls and implosions into reality, physicals are never his strong suit. He looks back to Emilee for back up. _ I know I got myself into this shit. But you're the boss. Do something._

-Go get yourselves a room, Emilee snorts.

-W—what the fuck? Aida gasps, aghast. Craig scowls. She doesn't throw anything at Emilee now, does she? He tries to seize the quiet.

-Hey, Aida says, have you told Craig about your sister yet?

He starts, curses himself for utterly forgetting.

-Oh she's fine, Emilee smiles. Sarah was hiking with some friends in the caucus mountains. They didn't realize Junius-7 hit till back at Odessa. The house is with the fishes but she's safe, puts up at mother's for now.

-Are you getting a new place?

-Shouldn't be a problem. Financially that is, she laughs sheepishly. We're thinking of either the Bahamas or the Tuscan coast. Emilee's brow knits. Take a stabilizer, you don't look too well. Craig assents. So, what's it like under someone else's command?

It had to come at then. There's a darkening hauteur, cold, edged and predatory that gathers wings him. His eyes flick to the ceiling and the lights withdraw their touch. Even Aida knows to sit a little farther off. His silence is acrid. A _tickticktick _parade of bitter thoughts and past carnage. At length he rasps.

-FUBAR.

-That bad huh? Aida scrunches her nose. He lets her soft voice redraw the box. All the old, comfortable walls and forces. He's pretty sure where they stand with regards to one another. But she says nothing more.

-Want to talk about it? Emilee asks

-I beg your pardon?" He returns without knowing he had gone.

-Only if you wished to talk it off. Emilee says again. She tries to catch his eye. What might be there that she'd want to check? Embarrassed he judiciously averts her gaze. And Aide's He pretends to stretch but realizes a genuine one will be welcomed. It's a good excuse to shift into a less exposed position.

It's nothing at all.

-It's nothing, he echoes the thought. Something finds a shape that he might almost hold. Hard and edged, he adds a bitter whip to his voice. SNAFU. What do you expect? FLEETCOM's still got a finger up their ass and politicians for brains. They're throwing a couple trillion in taxpayers' bills at ZAFT and hoping the Coordinators crack. Chaos, debris and vacuum. What else is there to talk about? Next we'll be hearing about another treaty. His eyes roll and spit ice.

-I heard ZAFT has something new, Aida says. Craig nods. He saw it during the battle. That tree of briers, Neptunian and obscene. Would that he had shot it down.

-It caused a premature detonation of the nukes. There was some sort of flash, maybe microwave or a neutron reaction.

Emilee sighs. She joins them on the bunk, puts an arm around both.

-Well, it's done now. For better or worse. She make a noncommittal gesture. How many people were on Aprilus? Twelve, fourteen million? I don't know but the last war, this war. I just don't know if it's right. Yes, as a soldier it is, we have to win. And who knows, maybe if those lives were lost more would be saved. But as a person I just—I mean, can you imagine what twelve million is like? As soldiers, as people. Aida?

Aida says nothing. He wonders how a Prasini takes this. Denounce Emilee a traitor probably. But she says nothing, her hair, like protective curtains, cascades over her face.

-Craig?

-I chose.

-And?

-We are soldiers. This is war. It's empty, like every celestial's lonely path. As hollow and profound as saying _This is life_. Like an old god giving shape to the idea of humanity. Like working fire.

-And as a man?

-I chose.

The darkness out there is absolute. The eternal, inviolable stronghold of night. You know what they say about lights at the end of the tunnel? They're wrong. It's all fool's gold, and it's no tunnel. Have you heard of Daedalus? He built the labyrinth, the insurmountable maze for King Minos. It's a prison you see, for a monster. But in a way we're all Daedalus, but there are no monsters, there's only us. And the tunnel, and the labyrinth…

Carelessly, He says it aloud. Aida's listening, she's playing with the folds of his mattress, but he knows she's listening. Emilee just stares into some occult abyss that twenty-one year olds and adults find. Fuck but he feels like a kid. She magicks food from her pockets. Another mystery, how she keeps herself stocked.

-Scones?

He takes one, hoping it'd stay down.

-Peace on you, says Aida, mouth full and anointing his bunk with crumbs. Don't you have one for yourself?

-Nope. I've got maneuvers at twelve, bet are Mccowell will throw in a gyro failure. Haven't had a run in three months, so today's the day. I'd rather not throw up in the cockpit. She drifts towards rest. Say, let me sleep abit.

They sit, just touching. Perhaps they're back on earth, in the Bahamas, or the Tuscan coast. The lights, the stars are all out, some clusters known, others alien, all unvisited by men. The breathing of the air filters might be crickets. There might even be peace. They've all known peace. But peace is no end-all is it? Flux can be the only constant. They can only be buffeted and torn by the solar winds, there by necessity. Mayhap war is a relief, you draw your fears, your villains in broad strokes. Give them eyes and families and minds so that they'd be mortal. Maybe that's why men like war. Because everyone runs. There are a thousand thousand desperate Elysiums, all built on hope and absolution and salvation and victory. But when you stop running, you know it's going to be right there. The wolf in your dreams. Cain with his knife. You in the mirror. And with infinite sadness and triumph say _Not good enough_.

Hey, Aida says. Got a Lucifer?

- It's off regs.

-Ha! Bite me, as if you've ever given a rats-ass for regs. She has a mouth for blowing bubbles. It curls into a perfect O, so that with a little huff, they'd tumble up to he'ven. Madeline will love her. In the forlorn chance that such a meeting would ever take place.

- Well how did you deactivate the fire alarm anyway?"

-You hit it till it breaks. It's really not too far from the truth. A three month run through basic field mechanics does wonders. All you need are a couple crossed wires and a quick fiddle with the laser circuit. The smashing was only…therapeutically ceremonial. At length, Craig solemnly asks:

-Want a Lucifer?

- Jeez, Ada tinkles. Could you please laugh a little?

-No

-Bloody hell, she sighs. Y-E-S, I demand a smoke. But now whats the catch?

Out there at the third turning of the day's shift, when noncoms who are no longer so sure they're still real shuffle in for food and café. But back in the calm, there are three, only a little more than children. They do not know that they touch. One sleeps. And two. A boy, pale with long, black hair, and a girl in an oversized coat. And one wonders, what is idyll?

-So planetside. Le Fontaine?

-Or any equivalent. Foie Gras, Caviar and Dom Perignon.

-You'll git heartburn. Or worse. Fat.

-Deal?

-Deal.

-There's a ship coming in.

They watch the oceanic trail of lights enter dock. You can almost hear the hydraulics pumping, then yawn, and there'd be the beautiful, noiseless medley of deep space. Then, its felt more than heard, the engines, hundreds, maybe thousands, of decibels contained, though that of course is mere expression. He likes this part the most. It's the breathe. Back at the academy, in autumn, he watched the leaves drift, they sigh, and then to rest. It's like that, the winding down. Full circle.

And beyond all that. In a constant everlasting, the songs of distant stars.


End file.
